


The Red String of Fate

by sakuuya



Category: Battle for London in the Air (Roleplay)
Genre: (for LITA), (for MotRD), Celine hooks herself a boy even worse than Dr. J, F/M, Pairing Roulette, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, The Lake House AU, The trauma this fic will cause Eugenio goes completely unremarked-upon, Time Travel, and honestly I love that for her, in the loosest sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29541999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuuya/pseuds/sakuuya
Summary: On holiday, Celine decides to respond to a strange letter she finds in some Reveran ruins. Maybe the stories of magic in this country are true after all…
Relationships: Celine Abinall/Nicodemo Marrivega
Kudos: 2





	The Red String of Fate

Veros, the Reveran capital, was beautiful in the summer. Many of the buildings, ancient and modern both, were built of warm-colored stone that contained specks of something that sparkled in the sunlight, and for such an old city, the layout was surprisingly airy and open. Flowers burst from window boxes on every street, and the fashion was a riot of color. Veros was a lovelier city than Manhattan for certain, probably even lovelier than Paris.

Celine found it all dreadfully uninspiring.

She’d taken the summer off from her studies in Paris and come down to the peninsula to enjoy the weather and do some landscape work. The bright, history-packed character of Veros would be captivating to someone, she assumed—maybe an Impressionist—but it all just seemed so provincial. 

The really frustrating thing was that actual Reveran art was _full_ of dark Romantic influence. Lots of stormy landscapes peopled by ghostly half-figures and even the occasional honest-to-God monster. Celine had done enough research when she was learning Reveran to know that those were folkloric references, but no amount of study could give her the bone-deep knowledge of folktales that a local would have. She’d hoped that the city itself would be spooky enough to inspire her, but she’d had no such luck. Nor had she seen any evidence that Reverans could do real magic, which was the most disappointing thing of all.

Her first couple excursions out of the city were similarly unexciting. Revera was known for its clear, rushing mountain streams and its rolling, fertile fields—justifiably, Celine supposed. But that didn’t mean she wanted to paint them. It seemed that Veros itself, besides being altogether too pleasant, also wasn’t in walking distance of anything more interesting.

After a fortnight of too-nice Reveran scenery, she hired a hansom cab to take her further afield. Auto-cars were rare in Revera, flying ones nonexistent, but the swaying motion of the horse-drawn hansom was pleasant enough, if slower than she’d prefer. Her destination was a ruined castle that’d been a royal residence until it was destroyed in that big revolution in the sixteenth century. And it was supposed to be haunted, but practically everywhere in Revera was, and Celine had yet to so much as feel a spectral presence.

The ruins themselves were a welcome sight, though, much closer to what she’d been picturing when she decided to spend her summer in Revera. They were just intact enough to cast a shadowy pall over the interior rooms, and they had that distinct foreboding quality of a building that had been empty a long, long time.

Celine thanked the hansom driver and reaffirmed their arrangements for a return trip. She thought it might be some spooky fun to spend a night here, actually, but she wasn’t equipped for that today. In fact, all she’d brought was a sketchpad and a bag full of pencils and charcoal. She hadn’t wanted the bother of lugging an easel all the way out here in case it was another bust.

That turned out to be a wise choice. Not because the ruins were unsuitable—quite the contrary. She spent almost the whole afternoon just exploring, marveling at the dark beauty of each mossy, stone-strewn room. There were almost no furnishings left after so long, but the occasional rotted shelf or broken stained-glass window let her build an imaginary picture of what each room might have been used for. Celine thought she was the only person to have walked here in years, if not decades or centuries, until she found the letter. 

It was sitting in a little niche shaped like a Gothic arch, the kind that would’ve held a statue or maybe a reliquary. The letter itself was made of heavy, high-quality paper, folded and sealed with gold wax pressed into a coat of arms. There was no addressee (and no envelope). Celine turned it around and around in her hands, even squeezed it to peer in through the unsealed sides. No luck, not in the gloom of the ruins. She looked around, more to see if anyone was watching than if she could catch sight of whoever’d written it, then broke the seal.

> _My wife is dead. I am surrounded by scavengers, and I shall give none of them the satisfaction of my grief. Writing is the only way to excise my feelings now that my only confidant has returned to Our Father in heaven, and so writing it shall be._
> 
> _Without Marianna, I am adrift. She was the light of my soul, the only good thing that has ever been mine, and I feel I may shatter without her. Whatever goodness was in me was passed from her. It will wither back to nothing in time, I am sure._
> 
> _I cannot even look at the boy—he has too much of his mother in him._
> 
> _No tomb, no remembrance is good enough for her, and none can fill the void she left in me. What use is living without her smile and her scent, her kind eyes and sharp tongue? The world has rendered me bereft, and so if I must struggle onward, I will avenge myself upon it._
> 
> _Even as I write, I know Marianna would not condone such thoughts, but she is gone now. Love has gone from the earth, so let the earth then be scorched in its passing._

Whatever she had been expecting, a lament for the writer’s dead wife sure wasn’t it. It wasn’t even a letter, really, though it had been sealed up like one. Why would someone write this, only to leave it here? The paper itself didn’t show any signs of age or water damage, which meant that it couldn’t have been in the ruins for very long. Heck, it had rained the day before yesterday, and this room had no roof. Even in its niche, the paper would have gotten at least a little wet. A couple days, then, at most, despite how archaic the prose read.

Or maybe, she thought, it was a ghost letter. She laughed at the idea, then winced. That was a hell of an attitude to take about someone who was clearly in a lot of pain—even if he was a ghost. 

Celine considered her options. She could just take it with her, but that felt like a mean trick to play on anyone who was expecting it. And while she could put it back, she had no way to reseal it. Whoever _was_ expecting it, if anyone was, would know that it had been opened.

She made a face. There was nothing for it; she’d have to apologize. She’d stumbled on far too intimate a moment to walk away without saying sorry. At least she didn’t have to do it in person. She tore a page out of her sketchbook as neatly as possible and wrote out an apology for snooping using her soft sketching pencil—in Reveran, of course, just like the letter was.

Her response ended up being mostly about her sympathy for the letter-writer’s situation. If she just repeated that she was sorry for opening someone else’s mail ad nauseam, she’d come off as tedious, or worse, insincere. Besides, the letter-writer’s grief really _was_ heartrending, and she wanted to ease his pain if she could.

She signed her name—just her Christian one—at the bottom of her apology, though the original letter was anonymous. He’d opened up so much despite not signing his name. Giving hers was the least she could do in response, and it wasn’t as though he’d be able to track her down from just that.

Once she put her response back in the niche along with the opened original, she went into another part of the ruins to sketch, but she couldn’t get that mysterious outpouring of grief out of her mind. She’d sketched about half a column when the hansom returned for her.

Although the ruined castle was by far the most interesting place she’d found in Revera, Celine avoided going back for a full week. She didn’t want to run into the letter-writer or -recipient and have to field awkward questions about why she’d opened their private mail. But not going back at all was unacceptably boring, so a week to the day after her first excursion, she hired another cab and went back.

The ruins sounded as nature-quiet as the first time she’d come. Nevertheless, Celine crept in—right to the room where she’d found the letter. It was gone, along with her reply, but there was a new, sealed sheet of paper in the niche. It had her name on it.

Celine bit her lip, but she reached out for it anyway. She had to know what it said.

In that same old-fashioned prose, the writer demanded to know who she was and how she’d found the letter. Yeah, that was about what she expected. Once again, there was no signature.

Another page out of her sketchbook—she hadn’t thought to bring writing paper—another soft-pencil apology. She also suggested that perhaps he not leave his secret mail unguarded in the middle or nowhere, or at least hide it better. To soften that blow, she reiterated her condolences from the last letter. This time, she kept his missive. It was addressed to her, after all.

She stayed away for another week after that, as she didn’t fancy getting yelled at in person. When she returned to the ruins, she found another letter addressed to her. She blew a raspberry at it, expecting to be scolded again, but just like last time, she opened it nonetheless.

> _To the Lady Celine_
> 
> _My deepest apologies for the way I berated you in my late letter. I was perturbed that you were able to uncover it, but I should not have spoken so harshly after you apologized. I know many who would not have done so, who would have laughed at my weakness. You have been nothing but kind to me, and I know you are not the cause of my grief. If I have not upset you too greatly, I would be honored to continue our correspondence. You seem a fascinating woman, in addition to one of immense sympathy. I hope to hear from you again._

Oh.

She couldn’t blame the letter-writer for being upset with her the first time, given what had happened to him. Still, it was nice to get an apology.

Celine had brought writing paper today, along with the fancy self-filling pen Blarion had gifted her when she left for France. Ironically, she ended up doing more sketching with the pen than she had with her actual sketching gear, as she included a quick drawing of the alcove where she’d found the letters with her response, just for fun.

From then on, every time Celine traveled back to the ruins, there was another letter waiting for her, even when she went two days in a row. It was as if the letters appeared by magic. Celine was in awe of how fast and cogently her mysterious correspondant wrote, though he did have some strange gaps in his knowledge. Whoever he was, he must have been from a rural part of Revera, because most of this century’s technological advancements seemed to have passed him by, though he was eager to learn about them, and he was fascinated with her sketches of the ruins, though he must have known what they looked like. He was also oddly coy about his day-to-day life, even as they still commiserated about his grief. 

Then one day, he deigned to sign the letter: _Nicodemo I_.

Celine’s first thought was that she had somehow been conversing with the actual prince of Revera, but no, that was absurd. She didn’t pay much attention to local politics, but she would have heard if the prince’s consort died, surely. So why the hell had he styled it as a royal title?

The University of Revera, back in Veros, was happy to open its library to visiting scholars, and it turned out they had a wagonload of scholarship on Nicodemo I. He wasn’t the current prince, but he’d been the last Marrivega monarch, the one who’d been deposed in the rebellion that reduced that castle to ruins. And from all historical accounts, he’d been an utter monster, brilliant and ruthless, who’d drawn out the civil war out of pure spite. It was thrilling, reading about him.

Of course, Celine was most likely corresponding with some jokester with a solid knowledge of Reveran history (every detail “Nicodemo” had shared matched up with what she found in history books, down to his crest on the seals), so the electricity that ran through her when she read about the historical Nicodemo’s atrocities probably wasn’t worth dwelling on. She supposed he could be a ghost, but why would he think his wife had just died, when he’d lived for some twenty years after that and lost plenty in the intervening decades?

Celine decided that it wouldn’t do any good to call his bluff. If “Nicodemo” was trying to trick her, he’d just lie, and from everything Celine knew about ghosts, confronting them with evidence of their deaths was a bad idea. But she started paying close attention to everything “Nicodemo” said about his life, and became more cunning about slipping references to modernity into her own letters, hoping to trip him up.

The most difficult thing was, she could feel herself falling for “Nicodemo.” It was tough to reconcile the erudite, grief-stricken man she was writing to with the brutal tyrant of the history books, but she’d be thrilled to meet either one.

However, it was getting to the point where the charade of “magic” letters was no longer funny. Jokes about ghosts aside, “Nicodemo,” whoever he was, was either using this ruse to open up to her without revealing his identity, or else he’d read the same books she had and was playing on her sympathy as a joke. Either way, it seemed high time to confront him. There was plenty of hiking and camping equipment available in Veros, and while Celine suspected that it was pitched at tourists—the prices were on the exorbitant side—she was willing to pay a premium to catch her mystery man. If only she could have hired a flying cab.

The ruins definitely got spookier as the sun set and the shadows lengthened, but Celine didn’t mind. There was something delicious about snuggling down in her overpriced sleeping bag and watching darkness encroach over the old stone walls. She’d set up camp in a little half-hidden alcove near the niche where “Nicodemo’s” letters kept appearing. In the dark, she didn’t think she’d be visible to someone standing in front of the niche, but she could see well enough through the darkness to know if anyone else was moving through the ruins. And she had a hand-torch with her, the most expensive thing she’d bought, to catch “Nicodemo” in the act. 

The ruins around her had no shortage of sounds at night, crickets and frogs and stone settling gently in the warm summer night. Even if she’d wanted to sleep, Celine suspected that she wouldn’t be able to. Sure, living in Manhattan meant that she was used to noisy nights, but auto horns and party chatter were human sounds. The ruins, by comparison, might as well have sprung up here just as they were, with no human intervention. They sounded like another world.

Those unfamiliar night noises, combined with her own excitement about confronting “Nicodemo” meant that she was still awake to see the niche suddenly flash with light. She jumped out of her sleeping bag, stumbling only a little, and flicked on her hand-torch.

There was no one there.

Celine swept the torch’s beam around the ruins, but they were still. Even the frogs and the bugs were quiet as she turned her light back to the niche, where a letter sat, still sparkling with red light. Celine reached out a shaking hand. The light faded when she touched the paper, and she felt a little electric shock.

This letter looked just like all the others, but it felt thick and uneven. When Celine tilted it to try to get a better sense of its contents, something fell out of the side. She put the letter back so she could pick up the fallen object and examine it by the light of her torch: It was a necklace made of intricately-knotted red string. According to the research Celine had done before her trip, they were part of a once-common Reveran superstition. Wearing one was supposed to protect the wearer from curses and evil influences like a nazar. She had planned to buy one somewhere as a souvenir for Grace, who’d appreciate the occult significance. 

She wasn’t sure if _she_ was in any mood to appreciate the occult significance of the necklace, which had appeared along with the letter by actual magic. It had to be—she hadn’t dozed off, and she’d been quick enough on the draw with her hand-torch that if someone _had_ dropped the letter off, she would have seen him.

Which meant, what? She’d been corresponding with the actual, historical Prince Nicodemo? She turned the necklace over in her hands. It didn’t look like it was hundreds of years old, but then, neither had any of the letters. That could mean that something hinky was going on with time here, but she didn’t want to jump any guns. It could just be some kind of parlor trick. What could she send in response, to smoke out whether “Nicodemo” really was a sixteenth-century prince or just some Reveran sleight-of-hand artist messing with her? A recording of her voice, perhaps. That’d be the nearest thing to judgement day for “Nicodemo” if he was who he claimed. And any modern Reveran well-read enough to fake being Nicodemo I would surely have encountered a recording device before.

Sentimental despite herself, Celine hadn’t let go of the necklace. This one, she wasn’t going to give to Grace. Even if she was being hoodwinked, she could at least keep this as a reminder of her mysterious summer flirtation. She took her torch between her teeth so she could use both hands to tie the necklace around her neck. In the daylight, it would probably stand out well against her black walking dress.

And of course, there was the letter as well, still sitting back in its little niche. Celine retrieved it and broke the seal.

The stars above her started to spin, and she could feel the necklace tightening until she was choking, choking, her vision blurring the whirling sky into a spiral of light. It was red now, too bloody to be a sunrise, and Celine wondered if she was seeing blood vessels burst in her eyes.

A heavy, buzzing crackle built around her, and her ears popped like she was descending in an airship. Then, everything went too quiet as the red lights in the sky coalesced into a point and spat out a man, who fell to the ground on his hands and knees, coughing.

He was dressed all in black, or something dark enough to be mistaken for it in the eerie red light, and the outline of his form was all wrong for modern suiting. Celine had dropped her hand-torch—probably while she was gasping for breath—and she couldn’t make it out among the general rubble.

“Nicodemo?” she said cautiously. “Er, Your Majesty?”

He looked up, and Celine could see the outline of a crown on his head.

“ _Celine?_ ” His accent was Reveran, more or less, but it didn’t sound like anyone else she’d met that summer, and his voice was hoarse besides. When he stood, he was taller than her, probably even taller than Cordelia.

“ _That’s me_ ,” she answered in Reveran, trying to sound jaunty even as her eyes cast around for her torch. “ _Who’re you_?”

“ _Nicodemo I of Revera._ ” He took her hand, then bent down to kiss it. “ _It’s truly a wonder to meet you, Lady_.”

“What—how did you—” Celine sputtered, too shocked to even take her hand back, let alone remember to speak in his language. She usually prided herself on her unflappability, but anyone would have a bit of a flap if a long-dead royal popped out of a portal in front of them, she figured.

The prince straightened, grinning in a way that made Celine shiver. “ _Your necklace. I worked magic in it that bound you to me, and used those bonds to pull myself here._ ”

“ _It’s an honor to meet you, Your Majesty._ ” Celine curtsied for probably the first time in her life, sliding her hand from Nicodemo’s. When she rose, she was laughing, giddy from the absurdity. “ _I thought someone was playing a trick on me._ ”

“ _I would never try to trick you. I’m unspeakably pleased that it worked, but if it hadn’t… at worst, I would have ripped myself apart trying to escape my bonds._ ”

She didn’t want to ruin the moment by mentioning that she’d thought she was being strangled to death. It had worked out. Instead, she said, “ _can’t believe you’d risk that just to see me.It’s meant a lot to me, writing to you this summer, but… This is enormous._ ”

“ _As I said in the letter, it was barely a choice_ . _After Marianna died, I couldn’t show a shred of weakness, lest my enemies at court attempt to unseat me. Then I found your letters, and once I ascertained their legitimacy, I realized the hollowness of my position. If my only comfort was a woman from the mists of time, what use would it be to stay in that den of jackals?_ ”

“Holey moley… Err, _I’m glad I was some comfort. But what about your kingdom? Don’t you think it’ll be a problem if the prince just suddenly disappears?_ ”

“ _Such things happen in Revera, from time to time._ ”

 _“Still! Maybe we could… go back?_ _I’m sure my disappearance will cause less of a stir than yours would_.” 

Celine could absolutely give up her normal life to go be with Nicodemo, who was so different with her than the fascinating tyrant she’d read about in the history books. She wanted to see that side of him too. And she was sure there had to be _some_ kind of repercussions to a ruler vanishing into thin air, no matter how blasé Nicodemo was about it.

Nicodemo shook his head, though. “ _I made a grave error in my grief over Marianna, and I’m not eager to return to my folly_.”

At that, the red light in the sky intensified and the buzz rose up again. Celine tried to cry out, but her necklace was cutting off her air supply. She found herself falling to Nicodemo’s arms, both of them clutching each other as they stared up at the furious sky.

As the buzzing crescendoed, another figure appeared in the air. This one fell to the ground gracefully, its (red?) robe fluttering around it. The red light faded as it landed, but not before giving Celine a good view of the grisly skull mask it wore.

 **_DID YOU THINK YOU COULD ESCAPE ME SO EASILY, LITTLE PRINCE?_ ** The masked figure asked in a sepulchral voice that seemed to bore right into Celine’s brain without engaging her ears. **_I AM ETERNAL, AND OUR BARGAIN STILL STANDS. HOW CONSIDERATE OF YOU TO BRING ME RIGHT TO THE WOMAN YOU CARE FOR._ **

Nicodemo pulled away from Celine and unsheathed his sword—she hadn’t even noticed he was wearing one—positioning himself between her and the masked figure. “ _No. This ends now_.”

“ _What bargain?_ ” Celine asked, stepping out from behind the prince. “Hey!”

Both of them turned to look at her. She could feel the weight of the new figure’s gaze even through the dark eyeholes of its mask.

“ _If you’re fighting over me, I think I deserve to know what’s up_.”

“ _Celine, I don’t—_ ” Nicodemo started, but the masked figure interrupted him.

**_OUR AGREEMENT IS THAT I GAVE THE PRINCE THE POWER TO DEFEAT ANY FOE, IN RETURN FOR THE DEATH OF THAT WHICH HE LOVES MOST. HE THOUGHT HE COULD TRICK ME WITH MARIANNA’S DEATH, BUT OUR BARGAIN IS NOT FULFILLED._ **

“ _Celine is bound to me, just as you are. She is outside your remit._ ”

Celine felt a hollow laugh issue from behind the skull mask. **_YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN MOST THAT NOTHING IS BEYOND MY REMIT. LOOK—EVEN THIS PALACE HAS FALLEN TO ME WITH TIME._ **

“ _Any foe?”_ Celine asked.

_“What?”_

**_WHAT?_ **

“ _You gave Nicodemo the power to defeat any foe, right?”_

**_IN EXCHANGE FOR THAT WHICH HE LOVES THE MOST—WHICH IS NOW YOU, CELINE._ **

She tried not to think too hard about the ramifications of that. Her chest felt warm and fluttery at the idea that Nicodemo really loved her, but she had more pressing concerns right now.

“ _So he should be able to defeat you too._ ”

 **_THAT IS_ ** **NOT** **_THE BARGAIN._ **

“ _Isn’t it?_ ” Celine challenged. The masked figure advanced on her, but Nicodemo stepped between them and thrust his sword through the figure’s chest.

**_VALIANT ATTEMPT, LITTLE PRINCE. BUT I’M AFRAID IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT._ **

“ _Then you’re reneging on our deal. She’s right: Either I can defeat you, or you’ve broken our agreement. In either case, you have no claim over Celine, and should you persist in bothering her, I will destroy you._ ”

The masked figure started smoking where Nicodemo’s sword had pierced it, as though the wound was causing it to discorporate. It shuddered and slid backwards, freeing itself, but the hole in its chest still smoked. It lunged at Celine, but she sidestepped it, grinning.

“ _You don’t scare me. If you could just take whoever you want, whenever you want, you wouldn’t have had to make a deal with Nicodemo.”_

And indeed, when the masked figure reached out to rake its taloned hand over Celine, it passed through her, insubstantial. The figure screeched in frustration.

 **_I_ ** **WILL** **_HAVE EVERYTHING YOU LOVE, LITTLE PRINCE!_ **

“ _Perhaps. Someday,_ ” Nicodemo admitted. He pointed his sword at the figure again. “ _But not this day. Now, will you leave of your own volition, or shall it be oblivion?_ ”

The masked figure let out another unholy scream as it reached for Celine but was drawn away, apparently against its will, back into the sky. When it vanished, the bloody light of its passage faded, leaving only the glow of a new dawn peeking over the ruins.

Nicodemo waited for a moment before he sheathed his sword. “ _I don’t know how to thank you. I thought I’d be shackled by my bargain forever_.”

Celine tapped her temple. “ _Things like… whatever that was are always literal. If you can catch them in a loophole, you win. At least, that’s the way it works in stories. I mean, this kind of thing doesn’t happen in the real world_.”

“ _It does in Revera_.”

“ _You keep saying that, but it really doesn’t. I’ve been staying here for almost three months, and besides your letters—and then you showing up, and that thing—I haven’t seen a lick of no-fooling actual magic._ _Which I guess means you’ll want to go back to your own time now that that thing’s defeated, huh?_ ” 

“ _No. Even if the danger has passed, I have no way to return and nothing to return to. But if you’d rather be rid of me, I’ll make the attempt._ ”

“ _No!_ ” Celine said, too quickly. “ _I want you to stay. But… don’t your people need you?_ ”

Nicodemo scoffed. “ _My people hated me. I think it a fitting punishment to abandon them to their fates. And don’t we still stand in Revera?”_

“ _Well, sure, but I don’t think you can just walk up to the current prince and demand your old job back…_ ”

“ _Of course, it won’t be as simple as striding into the palace and demanding the prince step down,_ ” Nicodemo said, laughing. “ _but I’m more powerful—and you, wiser—than anyone in your time. If magic has truly disappeared from this land, who can stand against me? Against us?_ ” 

He held out his hand. His eyes were alight with cruel excitement—he looked every bit the terrifying man Celine had read about. She could feel that the necklace came untied in all the excitement and was slipping off her neck; she tightened it back up before she put her hand in his, imagining the things they could do together.


End file.
